Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound" – good, but not good enough?

 So, I have been reading Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound by David Yewdall for a while now. It’s a very big book (by my standards). I have to say though, that however interesting it is, I am finding it hard to find some cool ideas that I could explore further as part of the dissertation. Don’t get me wrong, this book is AMAZING! But, the first 200-250 pages are full of anecdotes, stories about the industry, interviews with specialists from many different fields of film production, history of film sound in general, history of film sound standards and tools used in the past. There is a lot about how they used to use tape to record and cut sound. It is a very fascinating read, but I am afraid I will have to stop as it’s taking too much time and I could be reading about something that could hopefully spark those dissertation ideas flying faster.